SII Planning: NASCE: A National Spectrum Center to Conquer, Program, and Protect the Wireless Spectrum

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This award is a planning grant for the Spectrum Innovation Initiative: National Center for Wireless Spectrum Research (SII-Center). The focus of a spectrum research SII-Center goes beyond 5G, IoT, and other existing or forthcoming systems and technologies to chart out a trajectory to ensure United States leadership in future wireless technologies, systems, and applications in science and engineering through the efficient use and sharing of the radio spectrum. The objective of this project is to lay the foundations to establish the new Spectrum Innovation Initiative (SII) center NASCE: A National Spectrum CEnter for convergent research on transformative approaches to develop new spectrum science and technology. Today’s wireless spectrum is exceptionally crowded. It is expected that by 2025, over 75 billion devices will be absorbed into the Internet, generating a global network of “things'' of dimensions never seen before, all in need of unbounded wireless access. Beyond the clear commercial strategic needs, technologies such as 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT) are also critical for national security, shaping a technological revolution with far-reaching social, economic, and geostrategic consequences. Wireless systems will continue to change the way we live, work, manufacture goods, and protect our citizens. Furthermore, the role that wireless connectivity is playing as a unique vehicle to provide work and educational opportunities during the current COVID-19 pandemic—especially in rural areas—cannot be overstated. The overarching objective of this center is to foster the creation of next generation wireless systems capable of using the whole wireless spectrum, from a few Hertz (Hz) to Terahertz. The team will conduct advanced research in technology areas in support of the commercial sector, all segments of the wireless market, defense and intelligence agencies, in cooperation with leading industries in the field. All center activities are designed to prepare students and continuous learners for careers in spectrum-related fields via experiential learning, research, new workshops and shareable educational modules. The research promoted by this project is organized into three interdependent research thrusts: (i) Conquering the spectrum, with a focus on interdisciplinary approaches for broadening existing available spectrum options; (ii) programming the spectrum, for developing the foundations of applying modern data-driven techniques and software-defined networking for blue-sky approaches to spectrum sharing and exploitation; (iii) protecting the spectrum, for new algorithms and systems for reliable exploitation of the available spectrum in civil and contested environments, and protecting incumbent users. Orthogonal and pervasive to these fundamental thrusts, center plans and operations will be informed by the following technological themes: (a) policing the spectrum, with the twofold aim of providing technology for enforcing regulatory policies, and providing key agencies with technological and policy advice to shape the wireless future of our nation; (b) an Artificial Intelligence approach to new data-driven techniques for inference and control of large amount of spectrum data, and (c) perform and enable large scale experimentation and emulation thanks to our privileged access to NSF PAWR platforms, Colosseum, the largest RF networked channel emulator in the world, and to a Terahertz wireless networking testbed.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.